Monday, October 24, 2016

You may remember when ABC first blogged about its work in New Mexico. It said, "ABC Brokers Historic Bail Reform Compromise in New Mexico" by crafting language that "is good for the State of New Mexico" Go ahead, read all about it here.

Cut to today, when ABC posts a story in which a New Mexico legislator says that she won't support the amendment and thinks that "it will have a devastating effect on New Mexico's Bail Industry."

I can now say without any doubt that ABC doesn't know what it's doing. Or maybe they thought we'd all forget. What are they saying by posting today's story -- did ABC broker a historic compromise or did they just muck everything up? Hard to say since ABC seems to be saying both things at the same time.

Another question for the ABC conference next month: "When is ABC going to learn something about bail?" But, really, I've pointed out stuff like this for a long time, so my question is more for you bail agents: "When are you going to figure out that ABC is officially lost?"

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

Well, I got tired of hearing people say, "The presumption of innocence doesn't apply to bail" -- especially since I got the bail insurance people to stop saying it a couple of years ago -- so I wrote up a short explanation for anyone interested.

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Okay, now I understand the
ABC strategy. I knew the bail insurance companies were on their heels – there’s
just too much stuff happening all over the country for them to keep up. For a
while I figured they’d just spend another million and hire 3 or 4 more
lobbyists. But I see now that they expect you bail agents to do their heavy
lifting.

ABC is holding their first
ever affiliate conference, and it’s clear from the agenda that they’re sticking
to their whole “fight everything” doctrine. “Yes,” ABC says, “the whole country
is wrong, and it’s just that the right message isn’t being delivered. The sheriffs
are wrong. The judges are wrong. The prosecutors and defense attorneys are
wrong. The municipal, county, and state governments are wrong. The federal
courts are wrong, too. So it’s just a matter of changing everyone’s mind. And we
can do that by convincing everyone that they’re wrong!” Great strategy, huh? I
mean, they’re even going to “debunk” certain fundamental premises, like the
fact that we have a problem with bail to begin with. Folks, ABC already tried
that strategy 10 years ago when we first got started. It didn’t work. Man, it really didn’t work.

But then I see that ABC
expects all you bail agents to sign up for a panel and write up data and
anecdotes so that you can help with the fight. ABC doesn’t even know what to say
anymore, and so they need you to say it. Oh, they’ll give the standard
arguments they’ve been peddling around the country, but remember what I said
last week – those arguments aren’t working.

This is your chance to ask
these ABC folks a few questions. What are they doing besides fighting everyone
to ensure the industry continues to exist? Do they have any kind of strategy if
money goes away? What happened in Santa Clara when both the current and past
ABC head couldn’t even stop a county from changing? What happened in New
Mexico, New Jersey, Arizona, Alaska, Utah, and Missouri? What are they doing in
Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Texas, Kansas, California,
and Massachusetts? What is ABC doing about the MacArthur Initiative? What about
the Three Days Count Initiative or the Smart Pretrial Initiative? What are they
doing about the Evidence-Based Decision Making Initiative? They’ll talk to you
about the Equal Justice Under Law lawsuits (they’re fighting them, as usual),
but will they mention the other four or five national organizations planning
similar national litigation strategies? Do they have a plan for the Chief
Justices in America, who have mostly decided to move away from a secured money
bail system? What about DOJ? Do they even have any clue as to how to “fight”
the DOJ?

And just today, Harvard Law
School released, “Moving Beyond Money: A Primer on Bail Reform.” Did ABC even
know about that, or what any other big-time law schools or universities are doing?

My bet is that ABC doesn’t
even know about a quarter of these things. And I have twenty more that I can
list. Instead, ABC’s specialty appears to be going on conservative talk radio
stations of 1,000 watts or less. That’s why they need you to provide “anecdotes”
so they can create a “bail data” document. While you’re there, you might ask them what’s
wrong with the last sentence I just wrote.

Mostly, though, I think ABC
just wants a chance to try to justify itself. But if it doesn’t have a plan for
how you fit into the new world of pretrial release and detention – a world that
likely doesn’t involve those really high bail amounts – then they’re just
killing time until your businesses all die off.

Bail agents, the bail
insurance company strategy is to get you to do their fighting for them. It’s the only way they can keep up with bail
reform and not have to pay for more lobbyists with money from their own
pockets. But you should seriously consider whether the strategy of fighting
everything all the time is the right strategy for you. After all, it hasn’t
worked so far.

Friday, October 7, 2016

The bail insurance lobbyists
have been trumpeting a letter from a judge in Illinois, in which he presented “the
other side” of bail reform. Somebody sent me the letter pretty soon after he
wrote it, and asked for my reply, which I then sent to everyone I knew in
Illinois. He wrote 15 pages, I wrote about 15 pages.

So imagine my surprise when
ABC said that the judge’s letter was a “devastating blow” to the “no money bail
movement.” I mean, I read that letter, and it was full of the same lame
arguments the bail insurance guys have been unsuccessfully peddling across the
country for the last several years. In fact, there wasn’t a single new or unique thought. Really.
Not one. You know, to me it kind of looked like the bail insurance guys wrote most
of it. It even cites to Dennis Bartlett for goodness sake (I can’t imagine the
bail lobbyists writing something for someone else to sign -- cough, cough . . .
Paul Clement). This is no devastating blow. It’s just some judge. We knew there’d
be some like him, and we know there’ll be more. Some of bail reform will
require certain people to simply retire.

But my fundamental point is
this. If this judge said anything new, or remotely inventive, or even something
old in a better way, then you bail agents might have reason to believe that the
insurance companies are on the right track. But the letter is none of that. It’s
the same failed stuff. The stuff that didn’t work last week in Santa Clara. The
stuff that didn’t hold any sway when the Conference of Chief Justices wrote its
policy statement. The stuff that continues to get shot down everywhere it’s
raised. The fact that they got a judge to say it is no big news. They’ve done
that before, and that didn’t work either. These arguments will ultimately fail
on the merits, not because they weren’t said by the right people.

I’ve been doing this for 10
years, and I can give you a list of about twenty arguments that the insurance
guys have used that have failed. Most of them have been replaced with the current
twenty, but those arguments also fail to take care of the fundamental problems
people see in money bail. And I hope you all realize that because these
arguments are coming from people who profit off the status quo, they demand a
bit more finesse than these particular lobbyists are giving.

Bail agents, the insurance
lobbyists use things like this judge letter to make you think they’re making
progress. But look around. Check out the PJI website and just look under the “recent
news” section. Just today, I worked with California, New Mexico, Virginia, and
Illinois. And believe me, the people in Illinois aren’t thinking that this one
letter is any kind of “devastating blow.” Nobody else even knows it exists.
Along with Illinois, the rest of the country is moving forward.

Don’t be fooled, bail agents.
The bail lobbyists are inflating their efforts. They’re talking about minor
victories while they continue to lose the big battles. And they’re definitely
not thinking about your place in the “new” world of release and detention.
Until you demand that they work on a new strategy, you’ll get bogus blogs
talking about “devastating blows” and calling me and my friends names. I think
you deserve much better from the people who make all their money off of you.

About Me

Hello everyone! I'm a criminal justice system analyst with 25 years of legal experience. I was editor-in-chief of the law journal in law school, and I worked as a law clerk to a federal appellate judge right after graduation. I then worked in private practice for several years in Washington DC before I came back to Colorado, where I became interested in criminal justice. I worked for both the state and federal courts of appeals as a staff attorney doing criminal appeals, and I also taught at Washburn Law School for a year before I got involved in the local criminal justice system issues in Jefferson County, Colorado. In that job I quickly realized that there was a lot of room for criminal justice reform, and that's what I've been doing ever since.

For the past several years I've been working on reforming America's traditional system of administering bail. Believe me, it really needs it. I started this blog because I was getting somewhat fed up with all of the slanted misinformation and self-serving research and analyses circulated in the field. This is my little way of chiming in.

I think I've had plenty of formal education, and I hope I'm not forced to get any more (although I'm taking two classes on Coursera!). I have a law degree, a masters of law degree, and a masters of criminal justice degree in addition to the two degrees that I got in college.

I am currently the Executive Director of a Colorado nonprofit called the Center for Legal and Evidence-Based Practices. It serves as my platform for performing neutral and objective research and analysis of topics relating to bail and pretrial justice. I hope that you'll get something out of this blog, which will undoubtedly contain a few things you aren't likely to find anywhere else.